


Songs of Hope and Loss

by aphreal



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Game, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 17:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphreal/pseuds/aphreal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After fleeing Kirkwall in the wake of the Chantry explosion, Autumn Hawke struggles to protect her lover Anders and help him find a new life and reasons to keep going on. </p><p>A journey from darkness and desperation to new light and hope.<br/>Written for the Dragon Age Reverse Big Bang 2013.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work was inspired by minorearth's amazing fanmix "Quiet Revolutionaries" as part of the Dragon Age Reverse Big Bang 2013. I've been pouring this music into my ears for weeks and falling in love with it all. It's a beautifully and thoughtfully constructed playlist, and I highly recommend it. (http://minorearth.tumblr.com/post/56821380118/quiet-revolutionaries-a-hawke-anders-fanmix-for)
> 
> I owe huge thanks to SignCherie for letting me borrow her Autumn Hawke, whose relationship with Anders was a perfect fit for the music, and for critical feedback and insights that made this story about a hundred times better than what I would have written on my own. 
> 
>  
> 
> Superscripted numbers indicate the track each lyric was taken from:  
> 1 Safe and Sound - Chris Cornell  
> 2 Runaway - Pat McGee Band  
> 3 Lifelike - Black Lab  
> 4 The Broken Ones - Dia Frampton  
> 5 Quiet Revolutionaries - Duke Special  
> 6 Better Love - Eisley  
> 7 Won't Go Away - Vertical Horizon  
> 8 Us Against the World - Jay Nash  
> 9 Phoenix Burn - Alpha Rev  
> 10 The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot - Brand New  
> 11 Won't Turn Back - Needtobreathe  
> 12 Stood Up - A Fine Frenzy

We could sing forever songs of hope and loss  
\-- Quiet Revolutionaries, Duke Special

 

**If it makes you less sad, I will die by your hand** 10

“Anders, eat.” 

Hawke pressed the bread into his hands and watched as it tumbled almost immediately from his loose grip to the dirt of the clearing she’d chosen as that night’s camp site. He didn’t even look down. 

She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the hot tears prickling but refusing to give in to them so early in the evening. Her frustration wasn’t for the ruined bread – a small, stale crust, whose flavor honestly would hardly be hurt by a coating of mud – even though it was the last of the food she’d been able to beg from farmsteaders wary of an armed woman and the gaunt, silent man who trailed listlessly after her. 

The problem, the worry that caused her to cry herself to sleep most nights and wake exhausted and numb every morning, was Anders. Hawke was doing everything she could to keep him safe, hiding him from the Templars and bounty hunters, sleeping in the dirt, begging crusts from strangers, and avoiding every friend she’d ever made because she refused to expose anyone else she cared about to the dangers that trailed after her. 

And none of it meant anything if he wouldn’t eat. 

What good did it do to have saved his life at the Gallows and every time since if he was determined to starve himself to death? 

Anders stirred slightly, as if he was aware of her thought. And maybe he was; she would have said once that he knew her as well as she knew herself. “You should have let me die.” 

Autumn swallowed hard, forcing down the tears. She couldn’t do this again. Not tonight. “I’m not having this conversation.” 

“I deserve to die for what I did. All the blood on my hands.” He continued as if he hadn’t heard her, his voice flat and monotone, a lifeless shadow of the man she’d fallen in love with. “I’d rather it be you holding the knife.” 

She wanted to scream, to tell him that he was being stupid and selfish, how cruel it was to even ask that of her. But she’d tried that, over and over until her throat was raw from yelling and sobbing. It hadn’t gotten through to him, had only drained the energy she needed to take care of them both. She was out of ideas, didn’t know how to help him. All she could do was keep putting distance between them and Kirkwall, hoping that Anders would eventually start to find his way back from the dark places inside his mind. When he did, she’d be waiting. Until then, her purpose had been reduced to the daily struggle to keep him alive.

“You still could, Hawke. I wouldn’t mind dying if it was with you.” 

“It’s never going to happen.” She tucked a blanket around his too-thin shoulders, shielding him from the evening chill, and pressed a kiss to his forehead, ignoring the tear that dropped into his hair. “Good night, Anders.” 

 

**You’re so fragile and thin, standing trial for your sins, holding onto your self the best you can** 10

Hawke watched, helpless, as he withered more and more, shrinking in on himself. She knew it was the effects of Grey Warden metabolism burning through what little reserves his body had left, but some days she almost thought Anders’s guilt was devouring him from the inside. 

His face grew gaunt, cheekbones standing in stark relief, eye sockets sunken. The skin stretched over his bones creased and wrinkled like parchment. 

When she saw him studying his reflection in a puddle one morning, Hawke froze, afraid to do anything that might startle him and disrupt the first independent action he’d taken in weeks. She held her breath. Was he finally coming to his senses and realizing how far gone he was, what he was doing to himself? 

Finally, after a long, silent moment of Hawke’s pulse pounding loudly in her ears, he moved. Instead of the recoil she expected – hoped for – he gave a small nod. Satisfied, content, almost approving. 

She must have made some noise, given away her shock. Anders turned to her, his drawn face placid and calm. “I’d forgotten I used to look like this.” 

Her heart went out to him. She’d never seen him anywhere near this thin. Had the templars withheld food from unruly mages, used hunger as a tool to enforce desired behavior? Was he starving himself in mimicry of a familiar punishment he thought he deserved? Autumn tried to contain her emotions and respond calmly, to be as casual as he was lest she spook him like a skittish wild animal. 

“After your year in solitary?” When his face registered no comprehension – or confusion, only a blank lack of understanding – she elaborated. “Was that when you… looked like this?” She forced the words out, trying to keep her voice even. 

“Oh. You misunderstood.” He sounded almost uninterested, like they were talking about someone else, a person he’d never met. “It wasn’t Anders; it was Justice.” 

 

**You can tell me how vile I already know that I am** 10

Hawke lay wrapped up in a blanket like the physical warmth could give her comfort. She doubted she’d sleep tonight, but at least her body could rest even if her mind wouldn’t. 

Anders had finally started talking again today, saying more than a few words at a time, speaking with emotion instead of a flat, heavy monotone. Hawke knew she should be encouraged by the progress. 

And she would be, if only she could focus on the act of him speaking and forget what he’d said. 

Words burned in her mind. _Quit shielding me from the truth. I know what I’ve done. What I am._ and _I’m an abomination. I always have been._ All the while his eyes had been screaming, _Why won’t you hate me?_

She’d tried to answer with love and gentleness and support, as she’d always done when his dark thoughts got to be too strong. Apparently it had been a mistake. 

He’d turned on her next, spewing vitriol, digging into all of the places where he knew she was weakest, all of her failures. Not protecting Carver. Leading Bethany into an impossible choice between death and conscription, then denying her even the right to make that choice. Disappointing her mother so badly so many times. Dishonoring her father’s memory by failing in his final charge to care for those he was leaving behind. Bending her morals in the desperate, futile search to save her mother from a fate so horrific that death had been kinder. 

Anders had abused years of trust, turning every secret shame into a weapon against her. She’d been shocked, outraged, humiliated. Hours later, lying awake with hot tears on her cheeks, she still was. 

Hawke knew what he was doing. Begging her to kill him hadn’t worked, so now he was trying to goad her into it. To hurt her until she lashed out. To erode the love that held her hand back. 

She wasn’t going to let him do that. She could stay strong against the attacks just like she had against the entreaties. 

Hawke pulled her blankets tighter against a coldness that was more than physical and tried to focus on something other than the memory of her worst personal demons attacking her in her lover’s voice. 

Anders was talking again. What he was saying didn’t matter. 

 

**Never wanted to waste your time, never thought I would get so lost along the way, never wanted to break your heart … It’s amazing how far you fall before you wake** 3

Anders was coming out of a fog, a dark haze of guilt and regret and pain. He had no idea how long he had been in it, but judging from Autumn’s pathetically grateful looks when he did the most basic things – filling a waterskin, slapping away a biting insect – it had taken him a long time to make his way out. 

He wanted to go back. 

The selfish, crushing oblivion would be less painful than the shame he felt every time he looked at Autumn, the only person who had ever loved him unconditionally, and saw what he’d done to her. Her face was drawn and pale, dark circles spreading under her eyes. She constantly looked bowed down by the weight of her armor; her movements were calculated because she had no energy to waste. She was neglecting herself to take care of him, and the shame of that burned deep in his chest. 

He wanted to comfort and care for her, to gently work the tangles from her hair and watch over her sleep until the color came back to her cheeks. But it would be utterly selfish, meaningless gestures to assuage his guilt by tending to the little hurts while ignoring the gaping wounds he’d inflicted on her life. 

Because of him, Autumn had lost everything. Her friends, her home, her safety. A few nights’ sleep and all the gentle touches in the world could never make up for that. 

Anders had tried to tell her from the start that he was poison, that nothing good could ever come from loving him. But she hadn’t believed it, and he’d been too weak to refuse the one spark of happiness in his life, even though he knew he had never deserved her. He’d even briefly thought that her love might be enough to overcome all of the darkness, that her perfect strength could make up for all of his inadequacies and failings. 

He’d been blindly, willfully naïve, thinking she could save him. Nothing could have held back the doom flooding over his life, and all he’d done was drag Autumn down into it with him. 

Every time he closed his eyes, he hoped to open them on a world of grey nothingness where he no longer had to see the tears in her eyes and know he’d put them there. 

 

**I’ve taken too much, given up, I am twisted, burning, breaking up** 9

_If you want me to keep going, Autumn, then tell me how to do it._

_How am I supposed to get past what I’ve done, what I’ve become?_

_Everything in my head is ugly. My world is so full of injustices – abuse, death, torture, pain – that I can’t remember anything else. I don’t even know which parts of it are my fault any more, which tragedies I’m responsible for and which I let happen through cowardice and ignorance, which I saw and which I suffered._

_When anything’s broken and out of balance, everything is, and I can’t separate the strands of cruelty and injustice and hate to trace them back to where they begin. There is no source outside of my mind, just this mass of tangled wrongs, all of them on my head._

_How can I live like this, Autumn? Why should I want to?_

If he could have said the words aloud, he thought she might have had answers. But he didn’t know what he would have done with any responses she gave him, and he knew quite clearly that he didn’t deserve them. 

 

**We could wear out from wondering if what we do is right or wrong** 8

“Did I make the right decision?” 

Hawke sighed. That was all he had said for two days. Over and over. “Was I right?” “Should I have done it?” “Was it worth it?” No matter what she said in response, it didn’t satisfy him. Maybe because he could sense she wasn’t being honest. 

She didn’t know how to tell him the truth because secretly, she thought the truth made her sound like something of a monster. 

“Was I right or wrong? Hawke, please, I have to know.” 

Finally, worn down by the constant, desperate repetition, she let her honest answer slip out. “It doesn’t matter.” 

“What? How can it not matter?” 

It was almost worth it to hear him say something different. 

“Because it’s done. We can’t go back and change it.” 

“And that makes it all fine?” He sounded incredulous. 

It was the most engaged in conversation he’d been in weeks, and Autumn was torn between relief that he could still connect with her and shame that this was the side of her he’d come back to see. 

“That makes it irrelevant.” She struggled to explain, to find words he would understand. “If I’d known what you were planning, I would have done everything in my power to stop you. But I didn’t. And now we live in the world where…” She paused, taking a steadying breath before stating the harsh reality so plainly. “A world where you destroyed the Chantry and killed however many people were in it. There is nothing we can do about that; no amount of guilt and recrimination will undo the past.” A bitter laugh escaped her throat. “Believe me, Anders, if I could change things by blaming myself for them, there are so many things that would be different right now.” 

She took his hand, daring to touch him, finding herself pitifully grateful when his fingers wrapped around hers instead of remaining limp and nonresponsive. 

“But was I right or wrong? How can that not matter? People died. I need to know if it was worth it.” His grip on her hand grew almost painfully tight as he sought the answer he’d been begging for, the answer she couldn’t give him. 

“I don’t know. I don’t think we can know yet, not for certain, not without seeing what happens next. What I do know is that adding your death on top of theirs can’t possibly make things better.” She squeezed his hand gently, staring him in the eyes while a part of her exulted that she finally saw someone familiar looking out of those eyes. “The only thing we can do now is shape a better future with the pieces that are left. If it’s going to be right, you need to make it right. And to do that, you need to live.”

 

**Glad that you can forgive, only hoping as time goes you can forget** 10

Anders didn’t know how Hawke could look at him, knowing what he’d done. What he was. 

She said she understood why he’d made the decision. She said she didn’t judge him or think he was a monster. She said she still loved him. 

He wondered if she knew she was lying. 

Maybe not about loving him – although he really couldn’t fathom why – but about the rest of it. She had to be because it couldn’t possibly be true. He could feel it every time she looked at him. The blood on his hands tainting everything they’d had. The specters of the innocent dead rising up between them, forming an insurmountable barrier he didn’t know how to breach. 

And maybe that was all right. Maybe this was how it should be, the judgment he deserved. Hawke hadn’t let him die for his sins because that would be too easy, a coward’s way out. And while he had always been a coward, running before things got too hard, Autumn never backed down from anything. 

Autumn had been the one good thing in his life, so this was a fitting penance, to live with the constant reminder of how he had tainted their love. 

The selfish coward’s voice in the back of his head hoped that someday he could accept her looking at him the way she used to, like he was something special and pure and worth loving, but he knew he didn’t deserve it. He let the hope flourish anyway, because having it continually shattered – that was fitting, too. 

 

**I see the world, the world is you** 7

Some days were better than others. Anders still spent a lot of time withdrawn and blank, eyes distant, trapped in his own head. But there were moments when Autumn caught a glimpse of the man she loved looking out of those eyes, tortured and grieving, but familiar. She thought they were making progress, that things might finally be getting better. 

Until the morning Anders woke up asking to die again. 

“I can’t keep living like this. I don’t _want_ to.” 

Autumn nearly wept with frustration. Just when she thought she might be getting him back, might not be totally alone… She closed her eyes, looking away from his earnest, pleading face and trying to fight off yet another wave of pointless tears. 

“I don’t deserve to live after everything I’ve done.” Anders was still talking, his words like shards of glass burrowing into her chest. “I know you think I should fix it, make up for it somehow. But Autumn, I can’t! It’s too big, too hard. I wouldn’t even know where to start. And I’ll only fail, find a way to make it worse.” 

Autumn clamped her lips tightly closed against the sobs of frustration and despair welling up inside her. She couldn’t start this over. She didn’t have the energy to fight both the templars and Anders at the same time. 

“You’re the one who fixes things, Autumn.” Anders’s voice had turned softer, almost reverential, and it was so familiar that it broke her heart all over again. “If anyone can find a way to make up for what I’ve done, it will be you. And you don’t need me weighing you down any more.” He sighed. “I’m not asking you to do it yourself. That was a terrible thing to do to you, and I’m sorry for it. Just next time they get close, whoever’s hunting us – let them have me.” 

She couldn’t take it any more. “But I do!” The words came out unbidden, things she’d been holding back, promising herself she wouldn’t use against him when he was already so close to losing himself. “I _do_ need you.” Desperate, she took his hand, her grip so tight she could feel their bones grinding together. “If you can’t live for yourself right now, I need you to live for me. You’re all I have left, and if I lost you, too, I don’t think I could keep going.” 

The loss of control, when it finally came, was complete. Autumn broke down into giant, gulping sobs as all of the pain and fear and loneliness poured out of her. The only word she could manage was the occasional broken “please”, gasped out in a croaking voice thick with tears. 

And then, just as she’d known would happen, his arms enfolded her, feeling too thin but familiar all the same. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” He cradled her to his chest, resting his chin on her head, and she could feel his tears soaking into her hair. “I won’t go. I won’t leave you. I swear. For as long as you need me, I’m yours.” 

And just like that he was back. She knew he meant it; Anders would never break a promise to her. Autumn knew she should feel guilty, that she was being selfish instead of letting him heal in his own time. 

But she couldn’t regret it, if it kept him with her. Instead, she was filled with an exultant relief that she wouldn’t have to keep fighting a losing battle against his suicide, worrying every time she closed her eyes that he wouldn’t be there when they opened. 

Maybe in time he would learn to live for himself rather than for her, but at the moment all she could care about was that he would live.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Superscripted numbers indicate the track each lyric was taken from:  
> 1 Safe and Sound - Chris Cornell  
> 2 Runaway - Pat McGee Band  
> 3 Lifelike - Black Lab  
> 4 The Broken Ones - Dia Frampton  
> 5 Quiet Revolutionaries - Duke Special  
> 6 Better Love - Eisley  
> 7 Won't Go Away - Vertical Horizon  
> 8 Us Against the World - Jay Nash  
> 9 Phoenix Burn - Alpha Rev  
> 10 The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot - Brand New  
> 11 Won't Turn Back - Needtobreathe  
> 12 Stood Up - A Fine Frenzy

**Make me a better love, make me better, love** 6

In the darkness, he clung to Autumn. 

Her familiar scent and the sound of her even breathing as she slept were his only anchors against the maelstrom that still swirled in his head, threatening to overwhelm him at any moment. For himself, he wouldn’t have minded so much. This wasn’t the first time in his life he’d spent long stretches wandering in and out of the dark mazes that tangled through his subconscious, although it was probably the deepest he’d ever gotten lost in them. Still, it was a familiar pain, like a recurring nightmare that had ceased to surprise even if it had never lost its terror. 

But he couldn’t leave Autumn. He loved her more than he’d ever known he could love anything, certainly more than he’d ever loved himself. And she said needed him. He couldn’t imagine why she would still want him, why she had ever wanted something as broken as him. She had begged him to stay with her, and the memory of her sobbing pleas – knowing he’d hurt her that much – was a stabbing pain so sharp that he would have gladly fled back into his nightmares to get away from it if he hadn’t known that act of cowardice would only hurt her more. 

So he stayed, holding onto her as the only bright point in his darkness, the signpost to guide him out of the twisting dark mazes and back into a world of greys. 

 

**You’ve got my arms, now take my life** 2

Anders lay wrapped in her arms beneath shared blankets, and after so many nights of watching him huddled in on himself and knowing her touch would be unwelcome – or worse, unnoticed – it felt like a victory. A small, ragged victory as his too-thin frame trembled and his breath stuttered against her neck, but a victory nonetheless. 

“I’m not strong enough, Autumn.” His voice was a broken whisper. “I can’t fix this mess I’ve made.”

“Yes, you can. _We_ can.” She brought a hand up to cradle his head, tucking it closer against her chest. “Because you’re not alone, Anders. I will never leave you to face your demons alone.” 

She felt his tears soaking through her shirt, but he wasn’t shaking quite so badly. Running her fingers soothingly through his long, unkempt hair, she continued. 

“I will always be here. I’ll hold you through all of the tears and the recriminations and the doubts. No matter how many times you want to give up, I am never going to let you go without a fight. It doesn’t matter if you lose faith in yourself because I have enough faith in you for both of us.” 

“I don’t deserve you.” 

“It’s not about what you deserve.” Her lips curved into a tiny almost-smile against his the top of his head. “I made my choice a long time ago to love you, and I’m not going to let anything change that. Not even you.” 

 

**Stay for me with no disguise** 2

“If it’s not about what I deserve, how about what _you_ deserve?”

The rhetorical question took Hawke by surprise. It had been days since she had told Anders she intended to love him, regardless of whether it fit his idea of fairness, justice, or desert. Apparently he’d been considering her words the entire time and had decided to pick the conversation back up where they’d left off. 

He continued, intently earnest. “You shouldn’t be stuck with this mess when you had no way of knowing what you were getting into.” 

Hawke couldn’t help her reaction. She laughed. It was the first real laughter she had heard in longer than she could remember, and it startled them both. 

Seeing that she had Anders’s full attention, Autumn seized the chance to put an end to this line of thought. “I’m sorry, but that’s completely ridiculous. You’re not subtle, love.” She smiled fondly to take the sting from her words. “From nearly the first day I met you, you’ve been talking about freedom and defending the rights of mages. How many manifestos have I read? You blaze with passion for your cause, sometimes literally.” Autumn shook her head. “I may not have known exactly what you had planned, but I would have been a fool not to realize you’d do _something_.” 

She reached to take his hand. “I’ve always known who you are, Anders, and I love you for it.” 

 

**I know they’ve hurt you bad, wide the scars you have … All your faults, to me, make you more beautiful** 4

“How can you love someone so broken?” 

Today wasn’t the first time Anders had asked her that question, in one form or another, over the years they’d been together. It probably wasn’t even the hundredth. She’d given him the same answer that she always did, telling him in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t broken. He’d been hurt – Maker had he been hurt – but he’d survived, persevered. He’d never been damaged irreparably; he wasn’t broken. 

In all that time, she’d never found a way to tell him the rest of her response to that question. She didn’t know how to explain that she didn’t love him in spite of his scars – both physical and emotional, and it could be hard to judge sometimes which ran deeper – but because of them. 

How could she find words to tell him that the things the pain he’d suffered drove him to were so much of what she loved about him? Because he’d been hurt so often, he healed others, even those who he disliked, even those who might not deserve compassion. Because he’d been ripped from his home and imprisoned in a tower, he fought for freedom, not just for himself but for every mage who might ever suffer at the hands of a templar. 

It was a beautifully selfish sort of selflessness that had drawn Autumn to him from the first time she’d seen him in his clinic, healing Kirkwall’s poor without a thought for recompense, ready to defend his work against threats that only existed in his imagination. She hadn’t known then about the pain and regret that drove him, but maybe even from the beginning the part of her that struggled to make up for all of her failings had recognized him as a kindred spirit. 

Someone she could love because they were broken in all of the same ways. 

 

**I can’t help it, I love the broken ones, the ones who need the most patching up, the ones who’ve never been loved enough** 4

Autumn lay awake in the night, holding her lover close, trying to ignore the bones jutting out, birdlike, just beneath the surface of his skin, sharp enough she could feel them even through his clothing. 

Anders had finally fallen asleep after an evening of guilt-laden self-recrimination. _So much blood on my hands, worse than any abomination. It still wasn’t enough. Too many Tranquil, too many dead. Why couldn’t I find a way to save them?_

She thought that after the past weeks, she ought to have become numb to hearing him shred himself, but it hadn’t happened yet; his words still cut her nearly as badly as they did him. He’d fallen asleep, but things he’d said still echoed in her head, fragments of his self-inflicted pain that she couldn’t stop hearing. 

She felt like her reassurances weren’t making enough difference, even though he was obviously clinging to her every word like a lifeline. Autumn wanted so badly to help him see himself the way she saw him, but she sometimes thought he couldn’t hear her over the shouting in his head. At times like that, all she could do was hold him so he knew he wasn’t alone, that he was loved, even if he’d never believed he deserved to be. 

Autumn had always had a foolish hope that if she held him close enough for long enough, if she just loved him enough, she could erase all of his pain and scars, make the hurt go away. She knew that she couldn’t – of course she couldn’t – but she’d never been able to stop herself from trying. 

 

**‘Cause I finally found out you’re on my side with a bullet for the bad guy** 6

“Autumn, I’m sorry. You gave up everything for me, and I’m not worth it. I never should have asked you to. I’m so sorry.” 

Anders knew he’d apologized before so many times, probably even outside of his own head, but she still didn’t seem to understand, to realize that she’d traded a life as Champion of Kirkwall in her family’s estate with a circle of loving friends for life as a starving, homeless, isolated refugee in constant fear of her life. And for what? A broken-down apostate who could barely keep himself together at the best of times and spent as much time listening to the voices in his head as he did with her? You’d have to be stupid not to see how bad a deal that was, and Autumn was anything but stupid. 

“I didn’t give up everything.” She took his hand, her eyes so full of compassion that he wanted to weep with relief and scream denials and run so that she’d never find out how wrong she was. “I kept what matters.” 

“No.” He shook his head, determined to get through to her, even if it meant making her finally realize that he wasn’t worth all of this effort. “You lost your home, Autumn, after everything you’d done to get it and keep it. If I hadn’t pushed you into defying Meredith and the templars, you could have stayed in Kirkwall.” 

She cut him off before he could finish, her voice quiet but firm, unyielding like steel. “Kirkwall was never my home; it was mother’s. And standing against Meredith annulling the Circle, I didn’t do that for you, or not only for you.” Her face got a softer look for a moment, eyes distant and the slightest bit sad. “I’ve been protecting mages since long before I met you.” 

Anders felt a fresh pang of guilt, an old scar tearing open as he remembered how he’d taken Autumn’s sister away from her. If he hadn’t suggested making Bethany a Grey Warden… He’d done it to save her life, but there must have been a better way, a way to let Autumn keep the little sister she loved more than life itself. He should have known how to heal her, prevented her from being tainted in the first place, something, There must have been a better way; he just hadn’t been strong or smart enough to find it. 

A quick shake of his arm brought him back to the present before he could spiral further away. 

“Anders, listen to me.” He looked up to see Autumn staring at him, her eyes burning with an intensity he couldn’t escape. “I didn’t fight to defend the mages because you asked me to; I did it because it was the right thing to do. And I would do it again, even knowing what it cost, because standing by and letting them be killed would have cost me infinitely more.” 

Anders could only stare at her in awe, this amazing, passionate, perfect woman who had for some unfathomable reason chosen to bind her life to his. For as long as he’d known her, Autumn had never backed down from defending something – or someone – she cared about. She had always fought relentlessly for what she believed in.

And right now, the thing she was fighting for – unwaveringly, with every fiber of her being – was him. 

If Autumn – beautiful, courageous, strong, flawless Autumn – thought he was worth fighting for, how could he do any less? 

 

**The way you look at me I can say you set me free** 7

Anders didn’t know how Autumn could look at him without seeing all of the death, destruction, and horror he had caused, but somehow, inexplicably, she didn’t. She saw a man worth saving, a man worth loving, a man who had the potential to change the world for the better. 

He didn’t understand how she could see him that way, but he believed Autumn – believed _in_ Autumn – and he couldn’t doubt her sincerity. 

The version of him that he saw reflected in her eyes was so much better than the one that lived inside his head. He had no idea how to bridge the distance between the two, how to become more than the wreckage left by his past. 

But when Autumn looked at him, faith and love shining in her eyes, he could almost believe it was possible. 

 

**There’s nothing worthwhile that is free, but that makes no difference to me, you’re what I want, you’re all that I will ever need** 8

Anders had been sitting still for an hour, occasionally asking her a question before lapsing back into silence, and Autumn knew what that meant. He was turning an idea over in his mind, trying to make something she’d said fit with the things that were already there, and if it was taking this long, he must be having trouble making the edges line up. 

Judging by the things he’d said, Anders was still struggling with how she could still love him and want to be with him. Her lips pursed in fond annoyance. That was so typical of him, thinking only of what standing by him had cost her and neglecting everything his love had given her over the years. She longed for the day when Anders would be able to see the good he gave back to the world as clearly as he could see his failings. 

“I know what you’re thinking, love, and there’s something you’ve forgotten.” She spoke softly, and her heart lurched at how quickly his head shot up, the way he eagerly turned to her for a solution. 

Autumn smiled at him, setting a hand gently on his arm. “You don’t get to decide what’s too hard for me. After everything we’ve been through together, every challenge we’ve overcome, why do you think I would give up on you now?” 

He stared at her mutely, as if looking for words to shape an answer but coming up blank. 

Autumn moved her hand from his arm to caress his cheek, feeling the familiar roughness of his unshaven skin. “I love you. I think I’ve loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you, and nothing’s going to change that. Nothing.” She stared intently into his eyes, trying to chase away the doubt that clouded the edges of his mind. 

“I don’t think I’ll ever understand why.” 

Autumn didn’t think she deserved the level of awe and wonder in his voice, but it was better than self-recrimination and denial. “You don’t have to understand, just accept.” An idea occurred to her, something that might get through to him. “Would you stop loving me? If I did something unforgivable, something that got a lot of people killed. Would you give up on me?” 

“Never.” His response was immediate. “I could never stop loving you, no matter what you did.” 

She smiled, caressing his cheek tenderly. “There’s your answer, then. No matter how hard it gets or what it costs, I will always love you, and there’s nothing you can do that will ever change that.” 

She leaned in to press a light kiss to his mouth, reinforcing her words. His lips were chapped and dry, but he still felt like home. 

“This may never be easy, but I don’t want easy. I want you.” 

 

**How many times have we picked up the pieces and why can’t we do it again** 8

Being in love with Anders hadn’t ever been easy, but Autumn had never expected it to be. He’d warned her from the beginning that there would be too many challenges, that he was dangerous and damaged, that he wasn’t an easy person to love. 

He’d been wrong. 

Living with Anders might not have been easy – the cold bed when he spent late nights at the clinic; the manic fits when he lost himself to his spirit side and wrote like someone possessed; the parts of his mind that could never let him rest, even when the obsession was consuming his happiness bit by bit – but loving him, that had always been instinctive, as natural as breathing. 

And Anders falling to pieces was nothing new, although it still broke her heart to watch it, every time he started beating himself up, blaming himself for all of the world’s wrongs he hadn’t been able to fix. Over the years, Autumn had put him back together – put _them_ back together – more times than she could count. 

This was definitely one of the worst. His guilt and regret and self-loathing had shattered him apart into so many fragments, sharp and brittle shards that shredded and tore with every incautious move. But that was no reason to give up on him; it just meant she needed to be more careful in the reassembly. 

 

**The shattered heart, hungry for a home, know you’re not alone** 4

Anders was looking thoughtful again, and while Hawke had no idea what to expect this time, she wasn’t surprised when he finally broke his silence. “You said Kirkwall never felt like home.” 

It was a statement, but she could hear the question under his words: _Why not? What could I have done to change that?_

“The estate was Mother’s dream, never mine. I got it for her, because she wanted it. But it was poisoned before we ever set foot in it.” Autumn looked down, struggling to speak openly of her regrets. “How could I enjoy being there when all of the empty rooms reminded me that Carver and Bethany would never call it home?” 

“Love, that wasn’t your fault.” Anders spoke gently, putting an arm around her for comfort. 

She shrugged, knowing he believed that, even if she wasn’t sure she could. “After Mother died, I know we tried – Maker, we both tried so hard – but it never felt right being there, in the home that had been her dream. It felt like we were stealing something, and a home can’t be stolen; it has to be built. We were never going to succeed at building something real on top of so much loss. It’s almost a relief not to have to try any more.” She leaned against him. “We can make a fresh start.” 

“I don’t think I can find you a new mansion.” His words were joking, but she could hear the declaration of inadequacy laced under them. This wasn’t just about a building. 

“That’s all right.” Autumn shrugged, nudging him playfully with her arm. “I never wanted one.” 

“But it’s what you deserve. That and so much more.” 

She shook her head. “The last place I felt like I could really call home was a little farmhouse in Lothering.” She smiled at the memory. “Not because of what it was – it was nothing special in and of itself – but because that was where we were a family, all of us together.” 

Anders didn’t say anything, but she suspected it had been even longer for him, that the last time he’d been somewhere he could call home without feeling guilty was as a terrified boy being dragged away by templars under the stern glare of his father’s approval and his mother’s tearful silence. _He_ deserved more. 

Turning serious, Autumn pulled back a little to look into his eyes. “That’s what I want with you, for us. A home. Not a mansion or an estate or even necessarily a farmhouse. A home, a family, a life. My home is with you now, wherever that takes us.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Superscripted numbers indicate the track each lyric was taken from:  
> 1 Safe and Sound - Chris Cornell  
> 2 Runaway - Pat McGee Band  
> 3 Lifelike - Black Lab  
> 4 The Broken Ones - Dia Frampton  
> 5 Quiet Revolutionaries - Duke Special  
> 6 Better Love - Eisley  
> 7 Won't Go Away - Vertical Horizon  
> 8 Us Against the World - Jay Nash  
> 9 Phoenix Burn - Alpha Rev  
> 10 The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot - Brand New  
> 11 Won't Turn Back - Needtobreathe  
> 12 Stood Up - A Fine Frenzy

**Have to risk your life just to be yourself** 1

Autumn was on edge after they found the corpse. 

The man had clearly been an apostate. His staff, broken in two, lay next to his body, and a crude representation of the templar sword had been carved into his chest. Autumn could only hope they’d done that after he was dead. 

He looked uncomfortably thin, probably having been malnourished for most of his life in hiding, and the lines of hard wear on his face made him look older than she thought he had any right to. The templars who had killed him did something to the body that had kept the scavengers away, presumably to preserve the scene as an example to any other free mages who might come across it. 

Autumn felt sick to her stomach, standing in the manifestation of one of her worst nightmares. Her whole life, she had dreaded coming across a tableau like this one featuring her father, her sister, her lover. 

Anders seemed outwardly calm, but Autumn couldn’t imagine how seeing this must be affecting him. Without being asked, she joined him in building a pyre for the murdered apostate, hoping that putting the unknown mage’s spirit to rest might also bring Anders a measure of peace. 

Anders lit the pyre with due solemnity, calmly reciting the verses from the Chant that should accompany immolation of a corpse. It seemed incongruous to wish the Maker’s peace on someone who had been slain by His servants in His name, but Anders had never believed in the distorted version of the Maker that templars claimed to support. Autumn stood silently by his side as he stared into the flickering flames, waiting until the pyre and its occupant were reduced completely to ash. 

Finally, as the last of the flames died down, Anders spoke. He sounded thoughtful, reflective, strangely centered. “I finally remember why it was worth doing.” 

Hawke didn’t need to ask him to clarify; there was only one thing they referred to so obliquely. Instead, she waited for him to elaborate, letting him find his own words in his own time. 

“It was for him. For him and every other mage who never got a chance to live their lives without fear, who were hunted and killed for the crime of existing. I had to remember how many of them there are to balance out the scales.” He smiled sadly, the expression strangely fey. “The clerics and the templars forgot something when they declared us subhuman, unfit to live. If you take away all that a person has, right down to their very sense of self, what do they have to lose? We’re going to strike back for one very simple reason. When you’ve already lost everything, you’ll dare anything.” 

 

**Yell and I will never be heard** 9

Something shifted in Anders’s head after finding the dead apostate. He could finally see past himself and the looming horror of what he’d done to remember why he’d done it. That murdered man had put a face on his actions in a way that the innumerable corpses littering the Gallows hadn’t. There had simply been too many of them, to the point that all he had seen was the blood and tragedy spilling out in his wake. But a single man, an apostate cut down for no crime except being born with magic – his arms hadn’t borne the scars of a blood mage; Anders had checked – Anders could relate to that. It was a concrete truth he could grasp onto, a talisman against the guilt. He could hold up the memory of that too-thin face and say, _See? This is why I did it. Because he deserved better, and so does every other mage like him who simply wants to live._

He wished he could have found another way, but as the tunnel vision cleared and he started seeing past his guilt, Anders could remember that he’d tried. He remembered his manifestos, script-covered pages everywhere. Strewn across the clinic, tucked in Hawke’s library, pinned to the Chanter’s board, nailed to the Chantry doors. He’d written until his fingers were numb, until the lines all blurred and ran together, a tide of ink that could have flooded the Gallows and drowned every templar in the city. 

And it hadn’t been enough. No one had listened; nothing had changed. Trapped, backed into a corner, the only choice had been to do something drastic. He didn’t know if he had chosen the right path – as Autumn said, it was too early to know yet what the consequences would be – but he knew that he hadn’t seen another one open to him at the time. 

You can only scream so long before you lose your voice and seek a different way to be heard. 

 

**They told us not to fight, but we’ll fight until we die, ‘cause we are not frightened any more** 12

It had been weeks since they’d seen any signs of templars – or anyone else – following them, so Hawke had decided it was worth risking outside contact to restock their provisions. She’d found a small village that looked innocuous and gone alone, not wanting to expose Anders to discovery if she’d judged wrong. 

Anders hadn’t minded waiting while she ventured into the town; her reasoning for having him stay behind made sense. She would draw less attention on her own. But she had been gone longer than he’d expected, and he was starting to worry. He’d been pacing in this clearing for what felt like hours. Anders had every confidence that Autumn could take care of herself if it came to a fight – Maker, she’d taken down an arishok in single combat! – but he was used to being there to patch her up afterwards when she needed it. The idea of sitting idle when she might be in danger and he would have no way to even know, much less help, was driving him out of his mind. 

He was about to abandon caution and go in search of Autumn when she burst into the clearing. Her sudden arrival caused him to reach for his staff, but a quick glance was enough to reassure him that her eyes were alight with excitement, not panic. She was nearly vibrating with barely-contained energy. 

Within minutes, the news she’d picked up from the villagers came spilling out, so unbelievable that he made her repeat it because he couldn’t possibly have heard right the first time. But he had. The Circles were dissolved, all across Thedas. Mages had voted for freedom from templar control. The Divine – the actual Maker-blessed Divine! – had tried to shield them from retaliation, and the entire templar order had cut ties with the Chantry in response. 

Autumn was beaming. “Look what you’ve started, love. You showed them what a mage could do if he demanded to be free. They found their voice and decided to stop being frightened.” 

Anders could hardly believe it. Finally. It had finally come, the change he’d been hoping to start with his actions in Kirkwall. Destroying the Chantry had been a call to arms, one he’d begun to fear no one had heard. But the mages had finally answered, and for better or worse, nothing could be the same after this. “You said the templars are assembling, marching on the Conclave. It’s going to be war.”

“Yes, it is.” Autumn’s enthusiasm had dimmed somewhat, but the core of determination underneath it blazed just as strongly, undaunted. 

“But it always has been, really. The casualties have just been mostly limited to one side. It has to be better for mages to take the risk of fighting back rather than dying by inches.” He had repeated these arguments to himself so many times, late at night as he sat in Darktown carefully following the alchemical recipe that he hoped would change the world. It was finally time to find out if he’d been right. “This is the chance to make all of the sacrifices mean something.” 

Autumn nodded, then appeared thoughtful for a moment, studying her hands before looking back up at him. “No one in town admitted to knowing where the mages were gathered, but I think they were holding back. The answer might be different if the question came from a spirit healer.” 

He heard her unspoken query. _Do you want to go? This is the fight you’ve been dreaming of, the one you’ve been waiting for. It’s finally happening. Do you want to go?_

Anders shook his head. “After everything you’ve done for me, everything you are to me, I’m not leaving you.” 

Taking his hand, Autumn smiled fondly. “You wouldn’t have to. This is my fight, too, love. Wherever you need to be, I’m with you.” 

 

**Think of a life that won’t take the breath from somebody else** 1

Anders lay awake most of the night, thinking about the news and Autumn’s offer. The world was changing, and he should want to be a part of that. His actions had been the catalyst, the pebble that started the avalanche. He should want to go see it through, to be there for the ultimate victory or defeat. He should want to see the outcome firsthand. 

But he didn’t. 

In fact, he wanted to stay as far from the battlefield as humanly possible. And he didn’t know how he could tell Autumn that without sounding like a coward and a hypocrite. 

It wasn’t that he was afraid to die. He’d always known it might come to that, from the first moment he’d decided to take a stand for liberation. If the cause of mage freedom demanded his life, he would gladly give it with no regrets except for the pain his death would bring Autumn. 

He wasn’t worried about his own life, but if he went to war, it wouldn’t only be his life at stake. His hands were already soaked in blood, and the thing that made it even more horrifying was knowing that part of him wanted more. There was a part of him that remembered being a Fade spirit and living in a world of absolutes. He would never be fully satisfied until every templar ever born lay dead. 

And he wasn’t sure it would stop there. If he were in the middle of a pitched battle, he might lose control the way he had in those smuggler’s tunnels under Kirkwall. Being surrounded by death on such a grand scale, the overarching injustice of random slaughter in battle, might overwhelm him until he started lashing out at everything. Because when it came to war, no one could be truly innocent, so where could the need for justice stop? 

If Anders went to war, it was entirely possible that he wouldn’t be able to control himself until he was the only person still standing on the battlefield. And he couldn’t shake the creeping thought that it would be an acceptable outcome, cleansing fire that would allow fresh growth in its wake. 

By morning, he found the clarity in Autumn’s grey eyes that he hadn’t been able to reach in the confines of his own mind. He had to explain this to her. If she could understand and accept his reasons, it would mean he was making the right choice, not just running from his fears. 

“I can’t go join the war, Autumn. I have enough blood on my hands, and if I let myself add more, I can’t be sure whose blood it would be.” He willed her to understand, not to make him say the words aloud. The memory of what had nearly happened to Ella hung like a specter between them. 

Autumn said nothing, so he continued. 

“A part of me wants to go fight, but I can’t listen to that part of my mind. Because just killing templars has never made things better, not in the long run. It’s only created one disaster after another that I keep running from.” Anders spread his hands, studying them contemplatively. “I can’t make things better by soaking myself in more blood.” 

Slowly, Autumn nodded, and he felt some of the tension in his chest ease at her approval. “If that’s what you want, love. But I have one condition.” 

“Of course. Anything.” His response was immediate and sincere. 

Autumn’s answering smile had a touch of sadness to it, but that passed before he could wonder about it too much. “It’s time to stop running from the past and start creating a future. If this community is as receptive as I suspect, we stay here. If not, we find somewhere that is. This is your war, love.” She raised her hand to forestall any objection he might have made. “I understand if you don’t want to fight in it, but we aren’t going to sit idly by, either. Not when we could do something to help people in need. You’d never forgive yourself.” 

She took his hand, her expression gentle but determined. 

“How this turns out is what’s going to determine whether what you did in Kirkwall was right or wrong. Whether it was worth it. It’s our responsibility to make it mean something, love, and that starts here.” 

 

**To live a life like I wanted to, a life like we used to, live a life like days and days gone by** 3

Anders didn’t know exactly how she managed it, but Autumn had arranged for them to stay, in a little house on the edge of town. It was small – only two rooms – and dusty from disuse, but there were the remains of an overgrown herb garden out front, and the furniture looked sturdy if simply made. He couldn’t escape the feeling that someone had lived here not too long ago, and he couldn’t help wondering what happened to them. 

The number of medicinal herbs in the scraggly weed patch out front and the way the townsfolk had seamlessly incorporated a spirit healer into their community gave him at least a partial answer. He suspected he could fill in the remaining details for himself. 

Autumn referred to the place as home, but Anders wasn’t sure it felt like anything more than another temporary refuge. Nevertheless, she seemed determined to put down roots, and if it was what Autumn wanted, Anders would gladly follow her lead. 

So he joined her in weeding and airing and dusting, in stocking the pantry and filling the woodbin. All of the domestic tasks that went with keeping a home, things Anders had to dredge out of distant childhood memory from the last time he’d had a simple house to help care for. 

It felt good, doing simple chores with defined outcomes, creating visible signs of improvement. There was a satisfaction in the domestic physical activity. By the end of the day, he felt tired in a good way, like he had expended effort towards something productive and worthwhile. 

But it wasn’t until he lay down on the freshly-aired sheets, the rough-spun linen smelling of lavender and cedar, when Autumn’s arms wrapped around him and he felt her steady heartbeat against his chest, that the word had a meaning he could understand. 

Here, with her, this was home.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Superscripted numbers indicate the track each lyric was taken from:  
> 1 Safe and Sound - Chris Cornell  
> 2 Runaway - Pat McGee Band  
> 3 Lifelike - Black Lab  
> 4 The Broken Ones - Dia Frampton  
> 5 Quiet Revolutionaries - Duke Special  
> 6 Better Love - Eisley  
> 7 Won't Go Away - Vertical Horizon  
> 8 Us Against the World - Jay Nash  
> 9 Phoenix Burn - Alpha Rev  
> 10 The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot - Brand New  
> 11 Won't Turn Back - Needtobreathe  
> 12 Stood Up - A Fine Frenzy

**So tell me why I should run for cover at the sound of the coming thunder, when all I hear is the cry of my lover** 11

Hawke met with the group she had come to think of as the small town’s resistance council, those most influential and sympathetic to the cause of mage rights. It amazed her how quickly this place had become a home, how readily the townsfolk had opened their hearts to a pair of homeless fugitives. Anders attributed their welcome entirely to her way with people, and she could only shake her head at his selective blindness. 

He truly had no idea what effect he had. 

She’d tried to tell him, although he never quite seemed to accept it. But Hawke could see it on the faces of their new neighbors who were rapidly becoming friends. Healing a child’s broken bone or breaking the fever ravaging an infant’s tiny body, those simple, profound acts – things Anders did without a thought – won more love and respect than all of Hawke’s speeches and leadership and planning ever could. 

If, Maker forbid, the templars were to find them tomorrow, she suspected the whole town would rally in their defense. And Anders would have no idea why. 

Casting him a small, fond smile as he sat at her side, Hawke turned her attention back to those assembled. 

“There’s a war on. You know that at least as well as I do, since you’re the ones who told me.” That won her some grins and low chuckles. “And while it’s vitally important for the mages to prevail in this fight, it’s equally important that there be something in place for them afterwards.” 

She saw nods of serious, thoughtful agreement that bolstered her confidence to continue. “I can’t tell you what that should look like, because it isn’t up to me to decide. There are a lot of people who have a stake in this – mages and their loved ones – and they won’t all want or need the same things. But I think we can agree on a place to start. Here.” 

Hawke looked around the room, taking a deep, relieved breath at the signs of unhesitating support. “You’ve taken us in, and I am so immensely grateful for that, but I think we can do more. Send word to anyone you know who might help, people we can trust. Tell them there is a safe place for mages, a haven for those who support the war but can’t or won’t take a place on the battlefield. We need to build a sanctuary where mages can look towards a future, decide what they might do with their lives once they’re free to live without constant fear. If you have trustworthy couriers, I may have contacts in the Marches who can help us spread the word.” She was certain Varric, at least, would still be in Kirkwall; it would take far more than a war to dislodge the merchant prince from his throne. 

One of the town elders frowned. “Won’t that make us a target? If word gets to the wrong ears, it won’t just be mages coming to our door.” 

Hawke nodded firmly, undeterred. “That’s a risk we’d have to take. In addition to peaceful mages seeking shelter, we might attract templars, seekers, blood mages. People trying to destroy or subvert what we’ve built.” She scanned the group with a piercing, steely gaze. “Let them come. If we aren’t prepared to defend what we believe in, we don’t deserve to keep it.” 

There were shouts of agreement, cheers, a few hesitant voices speaking caution. In the midst of the general outcry, she felt Anders take her hand and looked over to see his face shining with love and faith in her. “You’re certain about this, sweetheart?” 

“Of course.” Autumn nodded. “Someday, someone like you will be free to love someone like me. That was the dream, right? Forget ‘someday’. Let’s make it real, here and now.” 

The surge of emotion in his eyes was so intense it was nearly painful. “I love you, Autumn.” 

Before she could respond, his lips were pressed against hers in a crushing kiss. Dimly, she was aware of the voices around her, shaping the future, but all she cared about in this moment was the man she planned to build her future with. 

 

**Change will come with wind and fire, shake us to the core** 5

Autumn was restless. Oh, she was pretending to sleep, but after sharing a bed with her for this long, Anders could tell when she was lying awake in the middle of the night. 

After the third time he heard her sigh, Anders lifted his head off the pillow and pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “Something on your mind?” 

Autumn rolled to face him. “Sorry, love. I didn’t mean to wake you.” 

He smiled, brushing a loose strand of hair from her face. “I’m guessing this has more than a little to do with the two bundles of blankets in front of our hearth.” 

“Of course.” 

Autumn was silent for a while after that, and Anders gave her time to turn her thoughts over, finding the right words. 

The “bundles” in question had been staying with them for nearly a week, since they had turned up on the road into town. Anders had been out front – working in what he’d taken to referring to as his weed patch, continuing the slow process of coaxing it back into a functional herb garden – so he’d seen them first. 

A lanky boy just through an adolescent growth spurt, with shaggy blond hair and a stick taller than he was. A dark-haired girl, even younger, holding a make-shift bow, drawn and nocked with a crudely-made arrow. They looked like children playing at being soldiers, until he looked into their eyes. The girl’s were hard and sharp, like daggers. The boy’s blazed just this side of madness. 

“We heard mages would be safe here.” The boy was the first to speak, his voice a strained, frightened treble. “Is that true?”

“If it was a trick, don’t try to capture us.” The girl’s voice was as hard as her eyes. “My brother can make fire.” 

Anders spread his hands slowly, trying to appear as harmless as possible. “So can I.” He let a small flame flicker into existence above one palm, holding it just long enough to see their eyes widen. “You’re safe here. I promise. Are you hungry? I can find you something to eat if you come inside.” 

As he’d expected, food had worked wonders in taming the pair of near-feral children, and it hadn’t been hard to get their story while they ate. The two had been Circle-born, taken away from their mage mother and raised in a Chantry-run orphanage. The girl claimed they were siblings, born to the same woman, but Anders had his doubts, based as much on their dissimilar looks as the punishments he’d seen inflicted on mages who had the misfortune to end up pregnant. Regardless, when word had reached the orphanage that their local Circle had rebelled and been annulled, they had fled together rather than waiting to find out if the templars intended to cull the mage-blooded children now that they’d finished with the adults. 

Anders had shared with them some of his history – nothing gruesome, just life in the Tower and the highlights of his many escape stories – and slowly won their trust. By the time Autumn had come home from helping one of the neighbor women with her flocks, she’d found the three of them seated around the table with the children laughing merrily at Anders’s description of his templar guards discovering the flaw in trying to chase a mage across a lake while wearing armor. 

By unspoken agreement, they’d made up sleeping pallets by the fire that evening, and the children had stayed. A week later, they were still here, and Anders supposed it probably was time to talk about the arrangement. 

Autumn sighed. “I’m glad they found their way to us, but they can’t keep sleeping on blankets by the hearth like a pair of mabari puppies.” 

“I saved the carpenter’s foot after that axe-cut that got infected. He would probably make us a pair of cots pretty cheaply.” 

“You want to keep them?” Autumn sounded surprised; maybe she had expected a longer discussion. 

But really, what was there to discuss? “Don’t you?” 

“Of course, I do. It’s just…” She tilted her head back on the pillow, staring vacantly at the ceiling. “I keep thinking about Bethany. If father hadn’t been a mage, what would have happened to a little girl who could make fire with barely a thought? These two aren’t the only ones. Apprentices who barely escaped when their Circles fell, mage children cast out by frightened parents, orphans. As the war goes on, it’s only going to get worse.” 

Anders nodded gravely. “We can give these two a home with us, but you’re right. By the time this war’s over, there will be far more than we can take in ourselves.” He smiled at a sudden thought. “Although, I suppose we should decide what our limit is. I’ve never even asked how many children you want. Do we need a bigger house?” 

Autumn laughed, shaking her head in disbelief as a smile of joy spread across her face. “I haven’t even considered it, love. Between you being a Grey Warden and us living as fugitives, it hardly seemed relevant. I suppose that’s different now that we have a home.” 

Anders’s matching smile was so wide his cheeks hurt, and it felt like his chest might split open from the amount of joy filling him. Home, family, love. He’d never planned on or expected any of it, but now, with Autumn, he thought he might really have a chance at the kind of happiness he could never deserve but would be crazy to refuse. 

He kissed her lingeringly, unable to resist when she looked so radiantly happy. “We can discuss how many children you want and whether I’m negotiating with the carpenter for cots or an extension to the house. You’re right, though, we can’t take in all of the children who will be displaced by this conflict.” He saw her joy start to falter and rushed to prevent that glorious spark from fading. “But that just means we expand our mission here. You said we were creating a sanctuary for mages. That doesn’t have to come with an age limit. I suspect if you asked around, we’re not the only ones willing to have a few extra mouths to feed.” 

That beautiful smile still on her face, Autumn nestled against his shoulder, finally relaxing towards sleep. “I think I’ll go to the baker’s in the morning to see if she’s making any fruit bread. We should have a nice breakfast to tell the children they’re staying.” 

Anders grinned in the darkness as she murmured sleepily through the rest of her menu ideas. He was fairly certain the children had already worked out that they were welcome indefinitely, but if she wanted to plan a special meal, he wasn’t going to object. 

 

**There are two of us, there will be many more** 12

“Is this where the healer lives?”

Hawke wasn’t sure what to make of the pair she found when she answered the knock at her door. The man in his neat, tailored robes was almost certainly a mage, but the woman with him… Cautiously, she decided to start by answering only what had been asked. “Yes, but he’s occupied with a patient right now.” 

“Oh, we’re not hurt. There’s no rush.” The man’s grin was open and friendly. “A few more hours won’t make much difference. Madame Lirene told us where to find you; we’ve come all the way from Kirkwall.” 

“And from Kinloch Hold before that,” the woman added. 

“But you’re a dwarf.” As soon as she said it, Hawke wanted to clap her hands over her mouth to put the words back in. 

But neither of them seemed offended by her rude observation. The man merely smiled broadly. “Dagna was the first dwarf ever allowed in the Tower. She’s a brilliant scholar. You should hear her theories on how lyrium interacts with…” 

“Finn?” Anders came up behind her, cutting off the start of what promised to be a long academic discourse. He sounded shocked. 

“Anders?” The man – Finn, apparently – looked equally startled. “I didn’t know you were the healer we were looking for. Also, I didn’t know you ever remembered my name.” 

“The hat was hard to forget.” Anders stood at her side now, grinning at the arrivals, and Hawke relaxed. 

“My mother made that hat.” Finn crossed his arms, and Anders’s expression switched instantly from mocking to sympathetic. Autumn felt a pang of regret, remembering Anders’s embroidered pillow, left behind in Kirkwall with everything else when they fled. 

After a moment, Hawke cleared her throat to break the awkward silence. “Lirene sent them.” 

Dagna nodded eagerly. “She said this was a place for mages who wanted to start a new life.” She smiled. “We’re here to help.” 

 

**We got work to do, love, but it’s still not too late, we could walk, we could crawl, or we could find an easier way** 8

Hawke suspected it was going to be a difficult evening. They’d gotten news from the war front today, and while things sounded encouraging for the cause of mage freedom, there were still the inevitable casualties. Anders had withdrawn after hearing the report over dinner, and she knew he was focusing on the deaths, wondering how many of them he might have prevented if he’d been there. 

She was contemplating the best approach to remind him of the good he was doing here, the lives he had saved and changed for the better. 

But Anders seemed to have reached a similar conclusion on his own, smiling fondly as he watched their children huddled around the table with Finn, in the midst of an impromptu lesson on whatever had caught the mage’s fancy this evening. “It’s time we gave them more than just a safe roof over their heads.” 

Autumn nodded. “We should start thinking to the future, both for them and all of the other mage children who are going to need a place after the war. Long term, there needs to be middle ground between locking children up in a prison where they’re deprived of rights and dignity or leaving them as apostates with no guidance who are likely to become a danger to themselves and others.” 

Autumn had been thinking about this a lot lately, since Finn and Dagna had arrived, and tonight seemed like as good a time as any to share her half-formed conclusions. “I think we need to create what the Circles should have been in the first place: schools. Places that young mages can learn how to control their abilities, while older mages can gather to learn from one another and share what they know.” 

Anders smiled wistfully. “That’s a lovely dream, sweetheart, but how are we going to make it a reality? It’s not like we have a college sitting around waiting for us to start teaching spells.” 

That was just like him, always thinking so big that he couldn’t see the simple solutions right in front of him. “What does a school really need, love? Students, teachers, and curriculum.” 

She gestured at their children, heads bent curiously over something Finn was scribbling onto a scrap of parchment. “Students we clearly have, and there should be more arriving soon since the network has been spreading word to towns near other Chantry-run orphanages and Circles. The faculty could use some diversity, I admit, since you and Finn both specialize in creation magic, but it’s a place to start. Dagna can probably teach the basics in all of the other schools, despite not being a caster herself. And I suspect you’ll have company before long, as well, now that word is getting out.” 

Anders’s smile had broadened as she spoke, and his face was settling into the look of awed admiration that often followed her practical approach to problems. “It’s a shame we don’t have a library to speak of.” 

Autumn shrugged. “We can get books. I’ll put out word that we’re looking for any texts on magic that the network can acquire.” She tapped a finger against her lips thoughtfully. “Some of the Circles are standing abandoned. I doubt anyone cleared out the libraries, and most scavengers probably didn’t think the books were worth taking. We’ll have to see what we can do about organizing recovery expeditions.” 

Anders chuckled. “With the way they talk, I wouldn’t be surprised if Finn and Dagna can rewrite half of what the Tower had. I’ll add doodles in the margins so they feel authentic. I think most of those were mine originally anyway.” 

Autumn thought this was the first time she’d heard him talk about something from the Tower with genuine fondness, and she resolved to see if their contacts in Ferelden could recover any of the Circle’s books. Finn might know who she could write to about that. She would probably have to owe a few people favors, but it would be worth it to see Anders reliving happy memories for a change. 

In the meantime, she was content with the smile on his face as he watched their children learn and dreamed of a future where all mage children could be as safe and happy. 

 

**Steel and concrete break beneath the steady waves of fearless hope and grace, in kindness there is strength** 12

There were days – most of them, really – when Anders couldn’t believe this was actually his life. 

When he’d watched the Kirkwall Chantry explode, red light radiating into the sky, he’d known with every fiber of his being that his life was over, that nothing good could ever come from someone who willingly caused destruction on that scale, that he would never deserve happiness again. 

Autumn had proven him wrong on every count, in ways he could never have imagined. She’d challenged him to give meaning to what he’d done and then – far more important – shown him ways to do it. Her love and faith had seen him through every dark hour and brought him out the other side into a world he had never believed could exist. 

And now, living in a village that had become a haven for free mages, watching young magelings learn and play without fear, sleeping every night under the same roof with a woman who he loved more than life and two amazing children of his own… it was everything he had ever dreamed of and infinitely more. 

It was hope, love, family. Home.


End file.
